I suppress a laugh at the use ofa-hole.Laiken was never one to curse.Fucking adorable.
I reach for her door handle, tug it open, and motion for her to slip inside. She does with ease, but I catch the top just as she goes to close it.
I brace my forearm on the top of her car. “Well, when you accept the position, just in case you haven’t fully read the rehabilitation plan. Let me inform you that my routine is daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. A lot goes into getting back on the bull.”
“Meaning?” She taps her silver-painted nails on the steering wheel with annoyance.
“It means”—I lean in a fraction, close enough to smell her perfume—“for the next six weeks, you’ll be mine.”
Chapter four
Laiken
“Behave. Both of you.” I point a finger at my mom as Sasha revs up the engine to her Porsche.
Husband number three died eight months ago and left her with a hefty bank account. I’m assuming that’s what’s funding their new ride and the majority of this trip. I know Mom’s salary at the Silver Ridge Assisted Living Facility isn’t mediocre, but a month-long vacation is going to cost them. Which is why I’ve insisted on paying half of the bills for the last year. For the longest time, she refused to let me. I am herbaby,and she’lltake care of me until she leavesthis earth, is what she wouldsay when I offered. But something had to give. I’m a twenty-five-year-old single mother, for heaven’s sake. I’m grown and brought another human along with me when I gave birth at the naïve age of nineteen. I had no clue what to do with a baby and definitely didn’t plan on doing it alone.
Mom squeezes me in a tight hug before climbing in beside Sasha.
“We’ll call if we need bail money!” Sasha giggles like a schoolgirl, winking so hard she almost loses a fake eyelash.
“You might want to call Maddox.” I chuckle.
They both wave and pull out of the drive. I head back inside the house. The old farmhouse may be chipped and worn, but her bones are good. And she’sours.
The screen door slams against the frame behind me as I step back into the entryway.
Trace is already dressed in hiscowboy armor. Wrangler jeans, a plain white T-shirt, his scuffed-up boots, and a cowboy hat.It’s 7 a.m.
A rerun of the PBR finals plays on the TV screen, the crowd cheering when a rider lasts the full eight seconds.
“Did you see that, Mama?” Trace climbs on top of the makeshift bull and chute my brother Maddox made him. It’s standing proud in the middle of our hazardous living room. “I’m gonna be at the PBR one day.” He settles on the empty barrel, one leg over each side as he shoves his tiny hand in the rope tied around the outside. “Just like Parker,” he adds before he tosses a hand up, then nods at an invisible person across the room.
Parker.
I almost forgot about his stupid therapy.
His stupid hurt shoulder.
His stupid pretty eyes.
“You hungry?” I ask, turning away from my son, who proceeds to pretend he’s being tossed around by a destructive animal in the middle of twenty unpacked boxes.
“Pancakes!” he shouts.
Good. That should keep my mind busy. “Coming right up!”
Twenty minutes later, pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs cover the thrifted kitchen table. An empty plate sits across from me after Trace inhaled the contents then escaped back to the living room. I’ve just sat down to eat mine when a knock sounds at the screened door, followed by a singsong voice.
“Good morning, Red!”
I drop my fork onto my plate as Dakota saunters through the doorway with Ivy Mayson following close behind.
Dakota Sterling is adon’t bug me before 8 a.m.kind of girl, so the fact that she is fully clothed and all smiles in my house almost thirty minutes from the ranch at this hour is alarming. And suspicious.
I narrow my eyes. “You’re out of bed before eight. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just thought we’d stop by. We were in town.” She snatches a piece of bacon off the platter and falls into the lawn chair next to me.
